Oakland leaders urge calm amid violent anti-Trump protests

Oakland officials urged calm Thursday after two nights of violent demonstrations left several police officers and a journalist injured and downtown business fronts wrecked when protesters raged over the election of Donald Trump as president.

Thirty people were arrested Wednesday night for alleged offenses that include vandalism, assault on an officer, failure to disperse, unlawful assembly and possession of a firearm, officials said. Three officers were hurt, though police didn’t say how.

A graduate student studying photojournalism at UC Berkeley said he was attacked by four masked men as he tried to photograph the looting and vandalism to a business on Broadway. He was taken to an emergency room with a fractured cheekbone and abrasions.

Donald Trump protest marchers pass Trump video being projected on the old Sears building on Telegarph in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, November 10, 2016.

Donald Trump protest marchers pass Trump video being projected on the old Sears building on Telegarph in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, November 10, 2016.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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Donald Trump protest marchers pass Trump video being projected on the old Sears building on Telegarph in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, November 10, 2016.

Donald Trump protest marchers pass Trump video being projected on the old Sears building on Telegarph in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, November 10, 2016.

“When (police) step in to stop an act of vandalism while it is happening, they become the new focal point for the crowds which can lead to an escalation of violence, not a decrease in the vandalism,” Schaaf said in the letter.

Police, however, did deploy several rounds of tear gas “to deter a violent portion of the crowd from assaulting officers with rocks, bottles, fireworks, M-80s, and Molotov cocktails,” the department said in a statement.

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Three cruisers from the Pleasanton Police Department — one of 12 outside law enforcement agencies sent to help the city’s police, were damaged, officials said. City Hall’s windows and glass doors were shattered and its walls graffitied toward the end of the march.

The protest, which ballooned to several thousand people Wednesday, dramatically decreased in size and splintered into smaller groups once police ordered everyone to leave around 8 p.m., three hours after the demonstration began.

The causes that drew people to the rally ranged from a rejection of the country’s two-party system to despair over the Electoral College process that elected Trump despite receiving fewer votes nationwide than Hillary Clinton.

“Something has to change,” said Shana Marrion, a 34-year-old Oakland resident. “But I also think about the demographic — the whites in rural areas — and I think about the need to address their problems as well. They’re Americans, too, and we have to understand why they chose Trump.”

Marrion and others explained why they fear a Trump presidency. Marrion said that as a black woman she feared Trump supporters “who think now they can do the things people did at his rallies.”

Oscar Vivanco, 42, said he worried Trump would eliminate the Affordable Care Act, which has helped him get health care for his 4-year-old son who has a rare brain condition.

“We have to continue with our life,” Vivanco said. “Today, we took him to school and the usual doctor’s appointments.”

The march began peacefully at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza to object to Trump’s election victory. It moved through downtown, Chinatown and Old Oakland as the night wore on.

Some in the crowd scuffled with police, and a few protesters tossed flares at officers as the demonstration became as much about antipolice sentiments as anti-Trump anger.

Schaaf and other city officials gathered at Latham Square on Thursday to urge for peaceful demonstrations and to comment on what Oakland faces under a Trump presidency.

“We will not be able to withstand that threat to our community if our community isn’t whole,” Schaaf said at a news conference, referencing the possibility of Trump targeting sanctuary cities, like Oakland, which refuse to help federal authorities identify and deport immigrants in the country without documentation.

On whether she hoped activists would halt the demonstrations, Schaaf said, “I respect Oaklanders’ rights to choose how to express themselves. I also want them to be aware that this particular form of nighttime street marches is used to facilitate vandalism.”